


Dear God

by Syberina5



Series: God Help Us [2]
Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, angst buckets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:06:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27676475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: Like you’re surprised. We both know I’m more of an ‘ends with a bang,’ don’t we?
Relationships: Belinda/Fleabag (Fleabag), Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Series: God Help Us [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015849
Comments: 22
Kudos: 29





	1. “Dear God, If you let The dinosaur not extinct we would not have a country. You did the right thing. Jonathan”

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I lived in London. Sometimes my love and longing for it bleed into my writing.  
> Summary: _Like you’re surprised. We both know I’m more of an ‘ends with a bang,’ don’t we?_  
>  Author’s notes: The last three minutes really wrap it up tightly—which I respect whole-heartedly—and in order to get into the juicy bits there has to be some regression. Unfortunately, something about this show has woken my need to dump angst buckets on characters, so regression time it ‘tis. I wish it would stop, but here we are. In order to balance out the angst buckets, I am using the adorable but unsubstantiated “Letters to God” by children I have found online as chapter titles.

{I was trying to be good. Really, I was. And I hadn’t been utter crap at it for several months at a stretch so there’s that.} She scooped up more plates and cups wishing for disposables so she didn’t have to think about the washing up. {I don’t know why I expected it to go well, settle in or something, be the new normal.} She dumped them into the waiting bucket of dishes she’d also have to wash. {Clearly that was never going to happen.} She glanced over her shoulder at Harry, the baby, and what’s-her-face who had taken to Hilary. Annoyed at their insistently making themselves welcome in her space, she took the sandwich they’d ordered out of the cold case, grabbed wood paste from under the counter—left over from repairing the cage where Stephanie insists on nibbling the floor—and swirled a glob on before covering it with the mayonnaise Harry ordered and pressing it in the panini grill. 

She looked up with a mischievous smirk. {Like you’re surprised. We both know I’m more of an ‘ends with a bang,’ don’t we?} 

She’d deliver the sandwich with an over-sweet smile and hope the terrible meal would put them off returning—none of her less invasive nudges had worked yet; something had to eventually—while she went back to what seemed a shadow of her life. 

There seemed to be paste in the place of all her former spice and pizzazz. No Boo to go talk with, no Claire to scandalize, no mother to comfort her broken hearts—not that it’s broken much; a two week binge and a few ill-advised texts and a certain priest wouldn’t even respond to her now—even Dad barely stopped awkwardly by to ask what she’d done with Godmother’s awful bric-a-bracs. The closest she got to fun these days was a good night out with Belinda. 

Belinda was posh and didn’t mind picking up the tab if it meant they could drink in posh places, so that is what they did. Good drinks in clean clubs with taxi’s home. It was like being a grown-up and it made her wish that Belinda travelled less so they could go out together more. Because there was only so much trouble she was allowed—even by herself—to get in. Harry was married, Claire was in Finland, Boo and Mom were dead, Dad was busy, and he-who-shall-not-be-named wasn’t acknowledging her existence. So… mostly well-behaved, mostly one-night stands, mostly home in her flat, mostly grateful no one had given her a cat to care for.


	2. “Dear God, I read the bible. What does begat mean? Nobody will tell me. Love, Alison”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I thought priests weren’t supposed to lie,” she mumbled into his_ beautiful, delicious neck.

He had acknowledged her for a while, though. More than actually. There had been a couple of glorious relapses. 

Her favorite { _read: sarcasm_ } started with a text message—they’d had to do some coordinating to keep out of the same parties Godmother had arranged—and ended in vomit. 

_Bartender: That’s it; you’re cut off. Only water from here out.  
Jesus: [sarcastically] Oh, okay._

_Who is this?_

_Ha bloody ha._

_No, really! Because the last text from this number is about Ancient Egyptian dildos and I’ve been e-mailed this joke from cardinals and bishops. Many times. So, who stole this phone? Is that you Father Brian?_

_This is yet another problem with the bible. There aren’t even good jokes! This is why there are no Fathers at comedy nights._

_You keep trying, luv, I’m sure you’ll find at least one good bible joke this isn’t already beaten to death._

{Bloody bastard.} She was floored by how he could just toss it out there, casual, misspelled, like someone’s aunt when she still felt her stomach drop out just at the thought of seeing him again at some fete, or—terror or terrors—some sexhibition. At least she expected to be saved the indignity of identifying his penis on a wall next to her father’s and other ex-boyfriends’—though he’d never been that despite her loving him far more than any of those she could remember.

She’d ordered another glass of red wine and tried to chat up the bartender she’d caught looking down her blouse a time or two. 

Of course she’d kept texting him. Later, when she’d been too drunk to get home, he’d fetched her up off the curb and deposited her neatly into her door. But she was drunk on red wine so she was weepy and morose and had clung and brought up what was—to her mind—the least enforced commandment. 

“I thought priests weren’t supposed to lie,” she mumbled into his _beautiful, delicious neck_.

“It is generally frowned upon by monsignors and God alike. Just a little help here,” he was trying to get her keys but she couldn’t be arsed to help, hadn’t the foggiest where she’d put them. He was a liar and she had no earthly clue where much of anything was.

“But you did.”

“Did what? Help? Yes, at least I have been trying, which someone is making bloody difficult.”

“Lie. You. You lied.”

He stopped and straightened them both to look into her eyes. “I didn’t lie to you.” His face was far too sober and too sincere and she wanted to kiss it terribly.

“You did. You lied to me.” She didn’t break his gaze, though the crane to her neck made breathing less comfortable.

“When?” he asked with his face all serious and heartfelt. {And lying.}

“You said it would pass.” She felt her eyes shutter, like a wind had blown across an old house.

He shifted again, pressing her into the door this time with his full torso, and smoothed his hands down the sides of her face, tucking away the errant bits. “It will.” She could feel that he wanted to kiss her, like a magnet divided between them. But instead he cleared his throat and reached unceremoniously into her blouse.

“ _Father, I am shocked!_ ” she cried, to which he snorted and came up with the keys.

“I’m not the one who put them down there.” He jangled them next to her face while rearranging their bodies again to open the door.

“Twas the barkeep,” she said with flourish.

“Was it before or after she stole your phone?”

“She’s stole my phone? That minx!”

He laughed and swung an arm at the light switch. “How did you think I knew where to find you?”

She pretended to think while she wrapped her arms tighter about him—if she were home he’d have little reason to stay—“God!” 

“Well, yes but He’s not much for burning bushes these days.”

“Just falling paintings.” They got stuck on each other again, that magnet pulling their eyes this time, their memories to the same moment. It was too much and she had to close her eyes against it. “When?” she asked, swallowing against the need to lick a long line up from his clavicle. 

“I don’t know,” he said quietly with his nose in her hair and his voice so close it was almost inside her skull. 

“Do you want it to?” she asked tilting her head back again so she could see his face, know the true answer.

“Yes,” he gulped, pain written even in his hairline.

“Liar,” she called him with her lips next to his but her eyes boring into his own. “Liar,” she said again and the movement caused her lips to brush increasingly against his until the end of the word was a groan of their tongues meeting. 

He still kissed voraciously. Like he was a Roman lion and she one of those early Christians eaten for sport and to quell civil unrest. Only she gave as good as she got. Even as she surrendered to the death that waited for her in his mouth she tried to eat him too. She tried while his hand dug again into her blouse, wrenched up her skirt, while she hooked her heel in his waistband and used the leverage against his narrow hips. They both burrowed for more of each other, the insatiable need that had been below the surface becoming wholly text and with one of his fingers finding its way under her knickers and through her labia and into—

There was a crash, something heavy and glass and clearly newly broken. 

He froze against her, clearly on a precipice, and she pulled him closer against her with arms and hands and legs begging. “No, please,” she said aloud, too close to choose what little dignity remained over keeping him with her just a little longer. 

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he said pulling back though his hand was still against her.

“I can say categorically that there are no paintings of Jesus in my flat to be warnings from his Christliness.”

But his hands were retreating, his heat, and she was unwanted and alone again, just as she had been when she walked into the bar.

“Oh fuck,” he rubbed his hands against his face and she hoped he could smell her on them, on the finger that had been just inside her. “ _Fuck_. We can’t do this.”

“But Father we already have.”

“Not… not… Jesus, you’re drunk. You could barely walk and I…”

“…am just going to leave me… again.”

“No. I… Yes. Damnit.” He ripped at his hair and screamed at her ceiling. He panted and turned back to her, where she stood against the sideboard he’d lifted her onto. He pulled her face roughly back into his own, kissed her fiercely, the way she’d been craving even before she’d met him. “You know how I feel about you,” he scraped out when he broke them apart again, “but we can’t keep… ugh,” he kissed her again like downing. “There’ll never be a ‘when’ if we can’t,” his hands on her neck squeezed as though he wanted to hug just that part of her, “give each other space… space to…”

“Space to what?” she said squeezing his arms with her fingers the same way.

“Space to forget. God, this feeling. This feeling when I’m wrapped up in you, its…” He swallowed. “It’s all I can think about and crave and until it… it fades I’m not going to be able to be alone in a room with you.”

“You’re alone in a room with me right now. You’ve yet to turn to ash or burst into flames.”

“I… I choose my vocation. God knows I want you…but I choose my vocation.” He also chose to step back from her, let go, move away.

“Your job.” She couldn’t look at him as he left by degrees still standing there with lips wet from her. 

“You know it’s more than that. You know how I feel.”

“So you want to fuck me,” her eyes burned, “but you love God.”

“Yes. No. Don’t… I love you!”

“Like a father?”

He looked at her like she’d smacked him and she wanted to see it. She found herself wanting to see it the way she had wanted to see Harry hurt by her carelessness. Then it had brought the peace that comes with quiet and distance from a pestering fly but here it brought the many-edged rush of vindication, pettiness, guilt. 

“That’s not fair. You know that’s not true. If I could love you that way…”

“Well, then I guess you’re not very good at your ‘ _vocation_ ’, are you?” She thought briefly she could smack him all night with his own words if it didn’t make her feel more than slightly nauseated. 

She heard him whimper in the sigh he gave. “I should go.”

“Probably far, far away.”

He grimaced and stepped back into her space and kissed her chastely on the forehead with his hands and arms braced to keep her at a distance. “I love you,” he said simply, almost cheerfully and she sicked up several glasses of red wine all over him. “Yeah,” he said and stepped back, looking down at the puke soaking into his clothing. “Don’t forget to brush your teeth,” he whispered over his shoulder as he left with a soft snick of the latch.

She looked down where he’d been and noticed that nearly all of it had landed on him and there wasn’t much of anything to clean up. 

In the morning she’d discover the picture of her and Boo on the floor, heavy wrought metal frame intact but the glass shattered. It would still be a bigger mess to clean up than the vomit.

***  
_There’s been a crime. I’ve notified The Met. I’m afraid your boss may be in some trouble_

No response.

_The word maniple has been stolen!_

No response.

_The rightful owner is clearly a man’s nipple that is so prominent it is visible through undergarments_

No response.

_Zac Efron is quite upset about it_

No response. 

_The Hemsworths have announced a frivolous lawsuit_

No response. 

{Fuck.}

{Fuck it.}

_They’ve asked you to sign-on, make it a class action suit_

{Fucking, fucking, fuck. Fuck him.}


	3. “Dear God, Please Send Dennis Clark to a different camp this year. Peter”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _{The end times.}_

She looked from her god awful relation to the sink and back. “If I fix this for you, I want none of your shit today.” 

“What?” Godmother innocently squawked. 

“I can,” she reiterated sternly. “I can absolutely fix this, but there will be no veiled remarks, no whinging about how, and no little digs while I sit in my _fucking_ childhood home. Not from you, not today. Agreed?” 

“I don’t know what—” 

She started moving at the second sanctimonious syllable. “Then you and this drain can rot and the party can be ruined and you’ll see just how much I care.” 

“No,” She felt her arm in a strong grasp. “I…” the higher voice faltered.

“A day of no shit is my price. Agreed?”

The woman just nodded once with much hesitance but determination about the mouth. {Can’t fucking bring herself to say yes out loud apparently. What do you want to bet a ‘Thank you’ isn’t in the offing either? No takers? Thought not.} 

“Fine, you back out on your end, make one snide eyebrow lift I will race back in here and jam it twice as bad myself. Understood?” 

A second stiff nod. 

“Right,” She took off her—Belinda’s—jacket and tossed it out of the splash zone, “bring me all the white vinegar and bicarb you’ve got and don’t be precious about it.” She tug out a salad fork from the drawer, well aware that by now the one her mother had kept on hand for this had been tossed with all other non-artistic imperfections. 

Five minutes in she’d sent the fluttering, fussing idiot from the room. Never one to be terribly patient she couldn’t deal with mucking out the drain, missing her mum, the possibility him, the visible weakening of her father—{Just a cold but the lowest I’ve ever seen him}—and her godmother’s nattering nervously. All she’d had to do was bark the word and the woman had fled. {The end times.}

At the end, just as she was finishing up cleaning her hands one final—necessary—time, Belinda slouched in the doorway. “All set?” She’d ushered her out and into a night, hopefully free of jibes—at least from one quarter. 

Her godmother fairly ran from her all evening, the priest never accepted his invitation, and when she related the scene in the kitchen to Belinda she watched the woman toss back her head and laugh. “God, good for you!” She felt Belinda’s hand on her leg. “I’m surprised you demanded just the evening and not.. a year!”

She looked at her father across the garden, a blanket on his lap, looking frail the way she imagined he’d look daily in years to come. “I didn’t think she’d be able to manage a night. A year would be like asking to clog the drain back up.” Her brain played it through faster than her heart moved past the image of her father. “In that time the damn thing would clog again and she’d assume it was me purposefully.” 

Belinda nodded and went back to her wine. “Still, good for you.”

She sighed and returned to her wine as well, sharing a smirk with Belinda after a beat.


	4. “Dear God, I bet it is very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world There are only 4 people in our family and I can never doit. Nan”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _{Is it through-the-looking-glass if everyone started on the insane side to begin with?}_

She stood at the bus stop passing the time on the way to the anniversary dinner—attending priest in attendance—glaring at the graffiti to pass the time. {It’s not even any good.}

LOVE ALE written in wide ink against the Perspex. {Fucking American hipsters studying abroad, no doubt. Honestly, you can’t take Americans anywhere… except to horrible bars.} 

She’d only take the underground if she could now that both the bus stops and bus rides held such reminders of her regrettable history. There was no escape it seemed. There were times she thought of leaving London and all reminders of men and friends and family behind. It was the first time a nunnery was at all appealing. {If the getups were made of jogger material I might seriously consider it.}

All to soon {Ever is too soon for this}, she found herself sitting round a table in the garden next to he-who-shall-not-be-named while Godmother couldn’t stop herself from touching him at every opportunity. Martin was the only one who had been replaced from the family’s best go at the WWE. To everyone’s instant relief Klare—not Martin—sat next to the once-bride {Convenient grabbing distance} while her father—the once-groom—sat at the opposite end. 

A year on—that she’d be able to easily mark time against the wedding wasn’t something she’d considered until recently—and she still couldn’t sit idlily next to him like seeing him naked had been a usual Saturday night or ignore the constant rip of a hot wax strip from her anus that was the first several months of them trying to let it “pass.” {Fuck.} It was different as it didn’t feel like some common molecule under her skin was dragging her towards him inexorably, but she was so aware of him that her breathing picked up and something crawled around her abdomen.

A year on and mostly the same people, but the tenor was different. Claire and Martin weren’t forcing their chipper recovering drunk routine, the stranger to her left hadn’t added a drop to her wine glass—or his own {Fucking surreal if he’s dry now}—and they believed her when she said the café is so doing terrifically that she’s hired help. It’s like a through-the-looking-glass version of the first dinner {Is it through-the-looking-glass if everyone started on the insane side to begin with?}.

“So, Father, would you like to say grace?” came the simpering call to attention from the head of the table. {Joy.}

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said rubbing and then clapping his hands. “Rub-a-dub-dub,” he continued with his hands clasped at the top of steepled forearms, his head nearly resting against the point of his knuckles solemnly, “thanks for the grub.” His head popped up unceremoniously and he crossed himself with a cursory, “Amen,” before reaching for the nearest plater of food.

“That was…” Godmother looked vaguely apoplectic behind the eyes, “brief.” 

“Yes, I skipped lunch today so the gratitude is high, even if the word count is low.” He scooped out great gobs of food onto his nearly full plate and she had to cough to keep from laughing. Several people looked at her to see why, so she drank some water while watching him smirk into his food. {Cheeky!}

Soon there was a question and the group was off again comparing the fare to Finnish cuisine and she pretended not to notice that he passed food away from her, avoided her hands when receiving the next dish. 

Things were far too calm and it felt like a storm was brewing so she waved a pack of cigarettes and escaped the table. She barely smoked anymore—{trainers are brutal enough and plenty expensive}—but the excuse was as convenient as Godmother’s arrangement of the forearms of attractive young men {Not that young}. She wandered over toward the bins, easy access for the butts—and let her shoulders drop. Long quiet exhales were practically meditation after the stress of dinner. All she needed now was for someone to show up and start complicating her down time. 

“You done?” Claire called from a few feet away. {See?}

“Yeah, just…” she waved it, took one last pull, stubbed it out on the bin, and dropped it in.

“Oh, thanks.” Claire shuffled closer and asked, “How are you?” in an overly concerned way that made it sound like she had cancer or been let go.

“Fine. Why’d you ask like that?” {Claire has no bloody idea how fucked up things got, how requited the whole thing was. We’re keeping it that way.}

“I haven’t seen you, and this isn’t an occasion where you can tell me what’s going on with you.” {True.} “So?” {She has news and wants me to ask her.}

“Nothing, really. The café is really good, the flat is fine, I’ve got a great vibrator, and had the best dirty martini of my life this week.” She swallowed, bracing for the news she was sure to come. “You?”

“Oh the same really. Well, not the same as you but the same I have been. Work’s good, Klare’s good, everything’s good really.”

“Good.”

“We’re trying,” she gasped as thought it was a tossed on after thought. {Terrible actress. Watch this.}

“Relationships take work.” {I have believably misunderstood the context she was aiming for.}

“No. Well, yes. I mean we’re _trying_.” She was clearly expected to clue into the emphasis.

“What?...For a baby? Really?” {Let’s hope this time it ends with less trauma all round.} “That’s wonderful! Giving marriage the finger then, are you?”

“Turns out marriage isn’t very Finnish.” 

She laughed, “What?”

“Almost nobody gets married there any more just… has a family and trusts it all to work out and honestly after… Well, I wouldn’t mind a little blonde baby.”

“Better than one popped out with a full beard.”

“Oh, God, no! Oh, that’s all I could picture. It was terrible. Some sort of man-baby.” Claire feigns a shiver.

“I’m glad you’re happy, Claire.” She let the feeling into her voice, the way she avoided with so many people, all those friends she was trying to make. 

“Thank you,” Claire squeezed her hand, let it go a moment before continuing. “This amazing martini, who’d you drink that with? Anyone special?”

“No,” she shrugged. “Belinda. Woman cannot abide a subpar mixologist even though she never gets the fancy drinks.”

Claire’s face fell {Predictable}.“Please don’t fuck it up with Belinda,” she whinged a bit.

“Fuck up being friends?”

“I mean…” she said in a somewhat conciliatory tone, “you’re not terribly good at relationships of any sort, and I have to work with her.”

“Wow, really?”

“Just… God help me if you fuck her and then steal a statuette from her apartment,” {I’ve never stolen a statue from anyone but Godmother. And I’ve lost count how many times I’ve taken that one.} “I’ll never be able to work in London again. I’ll have to become a stay at home mom and manage my child’s life like a hostile takeover. Think of the children and the teachers I will make cry routinely,” she argued. “Sure, it may be easy for you to be the cool aunt, but when in between school and six different enrichment courses and sports and music lessons and—”

“Christ Claire, have done already,” she interrupted more for the sake of Claire’s imagination than her own feelings. “I don’t know how many times you want me to tell you that we’ve never even kissed. I really think you have nothing to worry about. We go out, we drink, we have a good time.”

“But you wanted to kiss her, you said as much.”

“I have and asked, offered, and been turned down. Multiple times.”

“Well, then bloody stop it!” Claire slapped at her.

“I can’t now!” she matched in pitch and volume.

“What?”

“It’s a running gag,” she offered her sister. “Stopping would be suspicious. Like I was developing real feelings for her, or had been lying to get her to buy me fancy drinks in bars where I might meet Prince Harry and accost him.”

“You’re an awful human being and an occasionally very bad sister,” Claire said straight faced. {She loves it.}

“You love me.”

“God knows why.”

“So I’ve heard.” {Ugh.}

“Alright. Just… keep it in mind. I… she can be a bit of a shark, really, and I am just as worried for what a poor end could do to you as to my career.”

“Oh?” she asked as thought she had no idea about Belinda’s business acumen.

“I promise! But you have to promise!”

“No, I don’t,” she teased.

“Best behavior, please.” Claire held out a scolding finger, “No lusting after her priest.”

“Christ, all the old gags today, isn’t it?” {Help.}

“Promise.”

“Fine,” she conceded and fingered the top of the pack. “I bloody promise, but I don’t mean it.”

“You’re terrible. Honestly.”

“We’ve don’t this bit.”

“Alright, I’m going back. Coming?”

“No, I’m going to have another,” she waved the box and lighter still in her hand.

“Right. Sorry,” Claire grimaced, clearly aware that she’d interrupted before.

“No, I’m glad, really. Really glad.”

“Okay,” Claire said with a squeeze of her already full hand and left.

She stood alone again and started up another cigarette. The pleasure wasn’t as full the second time, but neither was the stress. She needed to dawdle though. Just to be sure. 

He never joined her. {That’s over then.} “When” had come for him and not her. Not quite. Not yet. Not as she stood there wanting more. Wanting a private moment with him where the past could be acknowledged before she returned to the world where only the two of them really knew.


	5. “Dear God, I Keep waiting for Spring but it never come yet. Don’t forget. Mark”

Sex with Belinda starts practically by accident.

She laughed at the terrible things Belinda had said about some old exec who’d tried it on with her at some board meeting and watched the way her throat curved to shoot down the last of her drink. She felt her loins lurch in that general direction, but the Manhattans she’d been drinking slowed her reactions considerably. “God, I am drunk enough to kiss you without your consent.” It was half joke—a frequent one—and half true. Belinda had the genteelly feral power to her that was sexy and spoke of just as much power in bed.

“I am drunk enough to let you.” It was the closest to a yes she’d gotten so far, which of course meant she had to lean forward and test it. 

It was a slow kiss, plenty of time for changed minds and maintained boundaries but the thrill of success, to finally have that which she had been jokingly, and not so jokingly, after for months singing through her. It led to a cheerful make-out in the bar, in the taxi to Belinda’s millionaire, posh, so-modern-it-hurts condo. It was at that point that Belinda didn’t necessarily balk but shy. 

“Maybe you shouldn’t come up.”

“What? Really?” She was incredulous and hot and saw no reason it couldn’t be a fun night for all.

“Look, you’re young and gorgeous and I’d rather like to keep you around awhile. In my experience, girls like you—”

She rushed forward to stop the thought in its tracks with a brutal kiss, the edges of need and rejection showing in her teeth. She relished in Belinda’s groan and how the woman’s hands came up to grab her closer.

“Fuck it,” Belinda said and they did.

She had her hand between Belinda’s thighs in the elevator, again in the kitchen, and a vibrator between her own in the bedroom. 

In the morning light poured through Belinda’s floor to ceiling windows kicking her hangover a gear higher but Belinda was bright as a fucking daisy. “That was glorious really, a bit of fun between girls, yeah? I think…I think maybe we should leave it at that,” she said over espresso from her machine. {Spaceship level machine, really. Just like the vibrator.}

“Fine with me as long as there get to be other bits of fun along the way.”

“Darling, don’t pin your hopes on it.”

That was one of the things she’d been meaning to learn, that the universe had been trying to teacher. Don’t get ideas or expectations. It all turns to shit eventually. She’d none of the optimism of her mother of Boo, her priest. Even her godmother had a cheerier outlook. {Though I suppose when your friend’s slow horrible death by cancer lands you a gorgeous house cum studio and a man who is too afraid of you to ever kick you out then your belief in silver linings has at least some basis in fact.}

It was easier to remain slightly detached because—while sex with Belinda always was enjoyable—she was always traveling and, when they did see each other, it was a nice surprise when they fucked rather than a forgone conclusion. They stayed friends. Even as when Belinda was based in London for several month at a stretch because of some issues with her mum, and their friendship started to change from an every so often to an every night occasion. 

Lawrence the doorman—she used to not be able to tell them apart but from the Hot One, the Old One, and the Lechy One—was the first to assume the status had somehow changed. From there one she was almost always over when Belinda was home. Coming over the night she was due to return and leaving when she’d fly out. 

Belinda never complained of the sweaters and such she wore out to work when she hadn’t left anything. “Darling, it’s not like you’re going to wear my best Helmut Lang to the café,” she’d say and go back to her tablet and the infinite numbers she followed for work. And she was being good—she’d almost promised Claire even—so when she wore jewelry she brought it back and the shoes didn’t really fit her anyway.

Over time they become less friends and more lovers though they’d never called it that. Now when they didn’t fuck it was because someone was tired or late home or leaving early or they’d had a tiff over work or dinner. Regardless she’s always comes over when she gets a text from Belinda: _Landed_. And the doormen know her when she arrives: “Miss, welcome home,” they say, swinging the door wide so she doesn’t even have to sully her hands with the pull. Makes her feel like a fucking Royal.


	6. “You don’t have to worry about me. I always look both ways. Dean”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Is it?” Belinda asked. “Is it something_ you’d _want?”_

They’re out one night—Belinda just back from Berlin (she’s toasted enough to have fun thinking it: _Belinda back from Berlin_ )—and some of the more dull acquaintances have latched on. She lets her mind wander and sees a man with amazing arms flexing each time he lifts his drink as the society matron he’s out with shivers and drools. {I mean I can see why. They look absolutely delicious.} Suddenly Belinda’s beside her taking her bag and motioning her to follow. She does and learns they’re off to another posh bar, another set of drinks, and another boring, nothing story from the man whose dragging them around. 

Belinda asks as they have a quiet moment dealing with coats, “That beefcake back there a friend of yours?”

“Fuck no, but I wouldn’t mind it. You think the biddy he was with is his sugar mama or just wants to be?”

“Oh, it depends on how much self-esteem she’s got left. From the look of the rocks on her ears I’d say likely she’s down to scraps.”

“Sort of sad, “ she says settling the heavy wool on her bare shoulders, “but I can see the attraction.”

Belinda looks at her consideringly and ushers them both out into the car her friends have pulled round.

On their way out of the next bar the beautiful ass of the waiter in front of her captures her attention. It’s possible she’s had too much to drink as she more than considers reaching for it, damning the consequences. But Belinda’s there and her terrible connections and they’re being good. Some business connection in play. 

Later in the car— _Back to Belinda’s whose back from Berlin_ —she leans her head back and thinks she may be able to avoid being sick if she keeps very still. 

“Darling,” Belinda starts and she hums a response, not moving as much as possible. “Darling…” She never finishes or she finishes the next day after the hangover has been plied with a full English and several cups of espresso. “You were quite taken with that man at the bar last night weren’t you?”

“Gigolo Arms? God, they looked like he could bench press a baby elephant and fuck you at the same time.”

“I suppose they rather did,” Belinda smiled.

That was her first clue that something was off. “I wasn’t going to though.”

“I know, darling.” She watched her girlfriend smile with some sincerity. “I forget sometimes that you must want to.”

She hesitated, not knowing where to motion on this one. 

“Look, for me it’s all muff all the time, and I realize that isn’t always your cup of…well, coffee,” she said watching the cup in question. “I may have many dildos, darling, but I don’t have an actual penis…if you find that is something you need from time to time…” She moved her plate away towards the sink. “I’m not saying I would have felt comfortable with you inviting him over or leaving to chat him up but… Well,” she glanced up, “I travel often and if, on one of those evenings you found yourself having _safe_ , casual sex then who am I to object?” She watched Belinda wipe the white ceramic resin counter with the equally white napkin and swallowed the bite she’d been chewing for quite some time. 

“Is it?” Belinda asked. “Is it something _you’d_ want?”

{God, yes!} “I haven’t thought about it. I guess there might be times. I… I admit I’ve never been involved with a woman for this long before. I can’t say that I would run right out and fuck someone,” {Lie!} “or that there is any particular person besides you I’d be interested in,” {Oh, big lie.} “but I appreciate you thinking about it and being willing to start the conversation.” {Truth actually.} She cleared her throat and moved the dishes towards the sink, mirroring Belinda’s actions. “How would you want me to handle it? Would you—”

“Oh, God, no! Don’t tell me. And don’t bring them here.”

“Oh, of course not.”


	7. “Dear God, If you watch in Church on Sunday I will show you my new shoes Mickey D.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Hello,” he returned and in the one word all her worst worries and fears were made flesh. {_ Fuck. _}_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Since writing this chapter I received a fairly deep, subcu laceration from a tin of tomatoes. I do love it a little less as a result.

They’re running errands when Belinda picks up a bloody pile at Tesco. 

“Hungry?”

“No, darling. Just dropping it off at the next.”

“Oh, I thought we were done.”

“No, sorry. Didn’t I say? Damnit,” Belinda ground the gears—she was fantastic at many things but a terrible driver who insisted, as in many things, on the best and so could not drive the fine machine she’d purchased—and pulled out into traffic. “I met this man at that do—your step-monster’s thing while you were in Finland—” {That she bloody well planned the second she’d heard I’d bought my tickets to see Claire and neither of us would be able to come.} “a bit of a tosser, really, but charming as the devil. Runs a food pantry,” she said absently turning left, “and I said I’d drop some things by.”

“Oh. Alright.” {Famous last words? I think so.}

She’d felt some misgivings when they pulled into a familiar neighborhood and would have outright sunk through macadam and into the ground water bound for the Fleet by the time she’d pulled round the back of the church if she’d been able. 

“This is the food pantry?”

“Yes, won’t take a minute. Come on,” Belinda bid and bopped the button for the boot.

She had some ridiculous number of bags looped around her appendages and yet more in her arms as she shuffled into a room of the church she’d never seen before but had yet to spot anyone who might recognize her. She was looking hastily for a place to drop the weight as it was slipping her hold when Belinda called out behind her, “Oh, wonderful. You are here. I was hoping I would see you while we were here.”

“Hello,” he returned and in the one word all her worst worries and fears were made flesh. { _Fuck._ }

She tried to slowly and demurely set all of the very awkward bags down and hope he didn’t really see her but Belinda had other ideas. 

“Darling, drop those things and I’ll introduce you.” Belinda’s attempt to take some of the weight shifted the whole amoeba enough that the lot of it over toppled and was spilled to such an extent that there was a tin of tomatoes rolling slowly across the floor. “Oh dear. Well, just leave it.” Belinda waved away the mess like someone who had staff that would materialize and clean it all up before she noticed it on the floor again. Belinda nudged her until she was facing him. {Too much to ask for a sink hole, you think?}

“Hello,” he said again nodding at her.

“Hello,” she said an smiled as wide as she dared given the desire she had to vomit. 

“Oh, you know each other?” Belinda intoned.

“Yes, sorry. I did her parent’s wedding.”

“No, you did not.” {No, he bloody did not.}

He looked at her a little bewildered and spoke again. “I guess that’s true, her father and step-mother’s wedding. I apologize. I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother.”

“Nor I,” Belinda said taking her hand, squeezing it. 

“Well, I guess that’s the introductions sorted. Where shall we put this lot then?”

“Oh,” he looked at the mess on the floor now half under the surrounding neatly ordered tables. “Well, if you’ve a bit you can help me put it all on the tables where it can be easily packed later.”

“Of course,” Belinda squeezed again and released, picking up a single bag. “How will I know what goes where?”

“It’s all labeled, just on the bottoms. Proteins here, there’s veg, just beyond fruit, after that grain, and that way is what we call the luxury isle. One offs, toiletries, and miscellaneous bits.”

“Oh, alright. This bag looks to be peaches so I’ll head that way.” Belinda was moving away and she felt rather stuck in space, like the rational order was moving away as well and soon gravity and linear time would dissolve where she was standing. {Most surreal moment I’ve ever had this sober.}

She watched him scoop up a couple bags as well, eye her cautiously, and move to putting things away. There wasn’t much to do but follow, pick up food she’d spilt and look for its place. The rhythmic work was soothing. Her shoulders began to fall in their usual way. Her neck and jaw loosened and she could smile back at Belinda as she made small talk in between questions about soup’s category and would olives be veg or luxury items. 

Just as the heap of food was nearly done Belinda’s mobile went. The conversation as it often did, had Belinda answering as she said, “Work darling, sorry, just a tic,” before she moved away, expressed some displeasure or confusion, and moved further away.

“Is it serious, you think?” he asked and she looked at him directly for the first time since she’d unfrozen. “The call?”

“Always.” She put the box of pasta on a pile of similarly sized boxes. “She’ll be back in a minute or so with some reason why she has to leave. The longer she’s gone generally, the more someone’s fucked up.”

“Happens a lot then?”

“Oh, yes. That’s life when you’re the businesswoman of the year.”

“Is she? Wow.”

“Is it hard being her _very_ particular friend then?”

She groaned and plunked down the last can in her bag. “I don’t know why that woman insists on introducing her that way. ‘My spirited step-daughter’s _very_ particular friend, Belinda…’” she says in a high voice.

“That’s disturbingly good, that impression of her you do.” His eyes danced merrily in her direction and it hurt too much to watch so she moved to keep working.

“It’s just that bit. I can’t say whatever in her voice, just the parts that make me want to throttle her.”

“So a great deal then,” he said with an amused smile that made her laugh. 

“It’s quiet an act, I’m thinking of taking it on the road.” She returned volley for volley, another rhythm.

“So it’s not true then? She’s not your particular friend?”

“Belinda is, but she’s also a very particular _girlfriend_.”

“Fuck, so I was right, she is a female.” He smiled and she thought about clocking him but found the idea of him being able to joke about her being with someone else was still painful too.

“Yes, definitely female.”

“Sorry, I just wanted to see…” He shrugged. “You seem so unflappable. It’s good. I’m glad. She seems to really care about you.”

“Thanks but… I was very flapped when you walked in I’ll have you know.”

“Truly?”

“You banned me! I didn’t know how you’d handle it, turf me right out, be all upset and ask me if I was always a dyke, act like you’d no earthly idea who I was…have no earthly I who I am.”

“Never. I’d never forget you. Boot you out on your bum’s a different story all together though.” He smile made the corners of his eyes crinkle differently she noticed. He was aging, as were they all.

“Right. Well, thanks for at least waiting. When she’s back, we’ll go.”

“No, please. I… I unban you,” he pronounced with some enthusiastic gesturing. “Far be it from me to get in the way of a couple’s spiritual life.”

“Thank you, I guess that’s the least of your pastoral duties. Still I don’t…”

“Look, she’s not back. We’ve put all the food away.” {Except for whoknows that’s still under these tables.} “Why don’t you help me pack some of these, you know, further those pastoral duties?”

She looked out the door and couldn’t hear Belinda’s voice, a sign that she’d be a while yet. “All right.”

He nodded towards a table in the corner and handed her a bag with some hideous logo on it she’d never seen. “I can’t even read this.”

“I know. They’re terrible but beggars can’t be choosy.”

“You had to ask for these?”

“To be fair, it was Martin did the asking.”

“Still attends here?”

“A bit.”

“Sorry. You must have heard some things.”

“I’m not,” he said handing her a box of Weetabix before putting a box in his own. “I hope I was able to help him, and by extension your family, through the divorce.” He continued to take items and fill both their bags. “It’s a bit nice to have something on him. Makes him a light touch. He’s good at calling around and getting people to give us crap that’s useful. These bags, a half broken washing machine—don’t worry, it fully works now—a plumber to fix the washing machine. It’s really quite a list.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s good for something,” she says taking a tin of peas from him. Only he doesn’t let go.

“He is,” he said to her like he meant something else entirely before moving on.

He went on again talking about other parishioners and schemes the church had got up to and she could hear in his voice he was well and happy in his work and hear in his stories that he was working hard. 

They packed bags through Belinda’s return; the excuse that she had to leave but “No, don’t stop on my account; you’re being a better person; I’ll just send a car for you at four shall I? give you plenty of time to change for dinner;” and a few farewells. 

She wasn’t sure how many they’d stacked up but the conversation had never run dry. She’d heard more about his daily life than she’d ever known before, details she was sure she’d have obsessed over. She supposed she’d told him more about hers as well, though she had tread carefully around her life with Belinda. 

It seemed unfair, that she had been able to move on if not entirely past him, have a sexually and romantically fruitful relationship with someone else when he was never supposed to have one with anybody at all. Later they were sat side-by-side {He still sits far too close for a priest.} on the garden bench waiting for her car to arrive. He was telling another lively tale about the reception kids’ catechism classes going haywire with such joy and passion that her heart hurt a bit—very familiarly.

“So it’s still there then?” 

“What?” 

“That feeling, you said it was God. And if you’re still” she waved at the outfit “then it’s still there, that feeling?” 

He looked away, inside himself, maybe that is what he had seen her do. But it didn’t make her angry, she didn’t feel abandoned—though maybe that was because he’d already made it clear where she ranked. “I could never quite explain it.” 

“Hmm?” 

“It’s all God. I… You are God—” 

“What?” She scoffed. {Bloody not.}

“—I’m God, your sister, your parents; we’re all God. ‘…Whatsoever you do to even the least of these so you have done unto me.’ That feeling,” he clapped a hand to his chest as if he could place it within himself, “was always God, even when it’s you.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“I know, my tall atheist,” he sighed. “I do.” He took a couple of the fingers on her hand in his and lifted her palm to feel his heart beat beneath his ribs. “My heart beats, with or without you. Your heart beats with or without me. That’s God. But…when we’re together my heart beats differently,” he pressed her hand more fully to him. She felt her own pulse stutter and pick up speed as their eyes remained locked. “And that’s God too.”

“So does the God in everyone… do other people…”

“Yes, but different. God is the only one who can be all things to all people. Mother and father, alpha and omega.”

“World without end, amen?”

“Where did you learn that?”

“I don’t know.” She laughed and didn’t know what to do with how, even after all this time, that light switched on inside her at his nearness, at the way his attention trained on her, his touch on her hand. 

“There’s more to it.”

“What?” She was so lost in this feeling, one she didn’t think she’d have again.

“You’re quote. It’s the Gloria Patri, a prayer. It’s said a lot; all flavors of Christian’s quite like it. ‘Glory be to the Father,’” he began crossing himself with their still-joined hands, “‘and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’”

“That sounds like a long time,” she whispered.

“It’s eternity.” 

They sat like that, fingers folded awkwardly against his chest, breathing just a hair fast, eyes on each other’s, and a small, sincerely sardonic smile turning his face. They sat like that for a while, until a car horn beeped and she stood up. Their eyes still on each other, she looked down at his upturned face and thought—rather entranced—that it must be what God saw when he prayed…whatever his prayers were these days. 

“That’s me.”

“It is.” He nodded and let her go. She dazedly got in the cab and watched him out the windows as he turned his eyes to the sky.


	8. “Dear God, If you give me /genie lamp/ like /Alladin/ I will give you anything you want except my money or my chess set. Raphael”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She wishes that she could explain how inextricable those things often became but she’s having fun, dancing, letting her hand drift up to his beautiful neck though every beat of it is with the knowledge that in a moment it will be gone. He’ll pull away or they’ll fuck it up again and the misery will be all she feels…again._

She’d been lulled. That’s all there was to it. A false sense of not security but complacency. Their godmother had still been a pill—particularly about Belinda—but the fact of Belinda have seemed to contain her. Belinda’s wealth, Belinda’s connections, Belinda the noteworthy lesbian were all things she had apparently wanted. Therefore things between Belinda’s girlfriend and the godmother in question had to remain in a sort stasis. There were issues but they were further between and didn’t seem to be quite so blatantly motivated. So of course one evening when Belinda is in Tokyo things go off the rather rickety rails. 

It didn’t start that way. {This party is just another one of her excuses to tell everyone how fabulous and tolerant she is so they call admire her. Vomit.} The whole group planned to attend: Team Finland {only Claire turns up}, Belinda {last minute work trip}, Harry and wife {who is still fun to make massively uncomfortable}, even his holiness with whom she has reached a detente of sorts. {Also, Gigolo Arms.}

Turned out that he’d done some modeling for a piece Godmother was working on and was a bartender at some painfully hipster bar in Peckham {Likely one of his drinkers defaced my bus stop.} and trying to become a smithy of some sort. She was plying him with drink and her general girl about town moves hoping to make it obvious that she intended him to do some modeling for her as well. Things were going well. {He can hold his liquor, that’s for sure.}

“Oh come on,” she laughed, “You have to say something.” He shook his head at her. “How can a woman pull down her pants, ask you if you like her horn, and you say nothing and walk away? I do not care that it’s a unicorn tattoo she has just gotten; it’s a crime against bawdy wit everywhere. There must be whole cemeteries’ worth of actors and writers turning in their graves in the most dramatic fashions possible.”

He laughed and she felt a hand at her elbow. She was very hopeful that it was Gigolo Arms’ hand so she leant closer to him but instead her elbow was pulled in the opposite direction. {Not Gigolo Arms.}

“Can I talk to you a second?” he asked in his very Irish accent, and she took a deep breath before turning to him. 

“Of course, Father,” she said glancing at him. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Gigolo Arms. “Don’t go anywhere.”

The Father led her a few steps and then a few more steps away.

“Oh, dear. This far from the party is not a good sign. Is it a dead body? Are you going to Father Brown it?”

“No,” he said finally stopping in a little copse she remembered from her childhood. “I just thought you could do with a minute or two to clear you head. You were seeming a little in your cups.”

“Father are you trying to treat me like a father?” She wasn’t so far into her drink that she couldn’t see she’d struck a nerve, that he remembered some of the things she remembered still at least.

“I am trying to be a friend. Your life is… very much your business but… I feel a little responsible for your… _Fuck._ In weddings there is this bit where I charge the congregants with taking a role in supporting the married couple, in helping them to stay together through adversity and trial. I guess I feel a little that way about your relationship with…”

“Belinda.”

“Yeah. Maybe that’s out of line and I don’t mean to butt in, God knows I don’t have much right given… but I have, so…” He couldn’t quite look at her straight. He fussed with his hands and reminded her of a boy, trying to explain how a vase come to be broken. {Adorable. The bastard.} “You mad?” he asked finally looking her full in the face.

“No,” she answered, “not. Irony is Belinda and I have a sort of arrangement. You are correct, I do have designs upon that young man’s virtue. My girlfriend has graciously given me permission to play with penises when she is out of town, and it was my very fervent wish to see if Gigolo Arms is using steroids because have you seen those things?”

“Gigolo Arms?” He seemed equal parts aghast and amused. “Do you not even know his name?”

“He told it to me.” {Jeff? John? George?} “But in a moment of climax ‘Oh, God’ often works much better than ‘Oh Jeremiah.’ It’s after all the closest I get to praying most days,” she threw in to bother him.

“You’re trying to shock me. It won’t work. You forget I know you. I know the kinds of things you think about.”

“Yes, you do.” She stepped into his space, looked down at him from the wedges she’d worn to annoy her godmother. “I know the kinds of things you think about too.”

The air seemed instantly thick around her. Far more than when she was trying to cast her net for Gigolo Arms. 

There is a burst of sound and suddenly music is playing, familiar music and not the background nonsense the bane of her existence favored for these events but the boisterous party music her mother had played. She misses her mother so much in that moment, the way she had been able to make every moment not an event but a party. 

“Dance with me,” she asks the priest, collar on full show. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he demures.

“Oh come on, it’s a foxtrot not a waltz.” She puts out her hands and starts to sing along. “He’s going to turn me down and say, ‘Can’t we be friends?’”

He shakes his head even as he takes her hand and, laughing, spins her out with a, “Sing it Ella!” 

They’re laughing and she can feel her mother there with her for the first time in ages when the music changes. It’s slow and melancholy. He doesn’t pull away but closer.

It leaves her dazed, this dance that is just a dance. No expectations or heavy breathing that make it clear it is sex in another form. His head notched in beside hers, eyes at his graying temple. She imagines, as she usually refuses to let herself, what her mother would think of him, of this. Not the party {She’d hate the party.} but of the tangle of her heart still determinedly beating next to his while not an hour before she’d been trying to stick her hands down the pants of someone else who is also not the person she is in a pseudo live-in relationship with. Ear to cheek she can remember her mother’s voice asking, “But are you having fun, darling? Or is it just a bit miserable?” 

She wishes that she could explain how inextricable those things often became but she’s having fun, dancing, letting her hand drift up to his beautiful neck though every beat of it is with the knowledge that in a moment it will be gone. He’ll pull away or they’ll fuck it up again and the misery will be all she feels…again. 

{Oh, Mum.}

“What?” he asks pulling away, stopping his feet, though the swaying continues.

“I didn’t—”

“You did. I heard—”

“Oh,” suddenly is Claire in their little cranny between the bushes. “I’m sorry,” she says with tears clearly in her voice.

“Claire, what’s wrong? Are you alright?” She drops her arms and moves quickly towards her sister. 

“I…damnit. I was just in the study, missing mum and I,” she swirls a finger overhead.

“It was you?”

Claire nods.

“Now _she’s_ in there trying to take out the CDs and figure out who did it and it’s awful. Dad won’t speak and what if she breaks it?” Claire asks on a sob. 

“Not bloody happening, do you hear me, Claire.” She looks at him and orders, “Stay with her. I’ll be back.”

She doesn’t realize that Gigolo Arms is looking to pick up where they left off outside and tracks her to the study where Godmother is about to take a letter opener to one of the few remaining pieces of their mother in the house. “Stop!” The whole very quiet room {rather hard to ignore the hostess having a nutty} turns to look at her. “You’ll electrocute yourself.”

“Well, then where is the damn plug? This racket is going to give people headaches,” she says like it’s altruism that has her ready to mangle the machine. 

“I’ve got it.” She digs around on the shelf but doesn’t feel the remote where it used to be. She wonders if it’s in Claire’s fisted hands in the garden. She instead kneels and opens the bottom cabinet, around the records, and finds the cords to the speakers. Yanking she sends up a hedge-your-bets prayer that it doesn’t damage anything and her father can put it right later. “There, no need for dramatics,” She says standing, dusting her hands. 

“No one was being dramatic.” {Bullshit is a gaslighter.} “It was dramatic for _someone_ to turn it on,” she says with her eyes more narrowed. {I apparently will be blamed despite that I was about to snog a priest in the garden. Sure. I know this tune.} “It’s interesting how you knew exactly how to solve the problem,” she says with her eyes wide and bright. {What does she think she is, some fluffy tailed woodland creature?}

“Well, if you’ll recall I lived in this house for the first twenty years of my life whereas you have only lived in it for the last five. I am sure there is loads of things I could tell you about it that you’d never know otherwise.” She only half hears her father whimper, half sees Claire and the minder who she’d hoped would keep her clear of the meltdown. “For example, Mum kept a special fork for unclogging the drain. It was just the right length, had the tines bent just so to get the angle but I bet you didn’t know that’s what it was for when you tossed it as mangled cutlery.”

“Is that why you did it?”

“Did what? What this time is it you think I’ve done to you?” she bats back.

“Clogged the drain! Turned on the music! Keep taking the statue of your mother! Stealing from us!”

“I didn’t do any of those things. Have you ever thought that maybe,” {Sorry, Dad. This one’s going to hurt.} “just maybe there’s a ghost in this house who isn’t so pleased with the way things are turning out?”

“Well, that would make an interesting movie,” Claire cuts in to the total dry silence that follows and tries to laugh about it but it’s stilted. 

“I agree,” Father Chipper puts in, “It’s like that one Nicole Kidman did…with the children?”

A couple of others offer movie recommendations and a general feeling of relief settles in. That’s when Gigolo Arms runs the back of his hand down her bare arm and says loud enough for others to hear, “Hey babe, let’s get out of here, go back to mine.”

“Ah, isn’t this rather the caliber we’ve come to expect from you?” the cunt says with perfect clarity as though it is supposed to be some private, murmured slight rather than a clear bell through the group that had only just felt rescued from a family drama. 

The only thing she can do to keep from tearing the house down around the bitch’s ears is leave. The bodies, the rooms, it’s all a blur until she is tucked back in the farthest reach of the garden where her mother knew to find her when she had done something worthy of punishment. {Mum always let me sit here, scared and angry and hurt, until I was ready to pop and showed up just as I was having a good cry. Made every punishment seem like a damn release.} 

But her mother is dead, and if she cries too loudly the guests will hear. She has to stay there until they’ve all gone and make her escape.

The bushes rustled just as she was about to make said escape and a series of options occurred to her: the priest, the priest’s fox, Claire, or…

“It’s you,” said her father. At his appearance she battened down what emotional hatches she could find. 

She eyed him nervously and scrubbed at the evidence on her face. 

“Here,” her father said handing her a cool, damp hanky, just like her mother used to. It was hard to swallow back the sob just that one tender memory evoked. But inside it burned the anger that he remembered and still did nothing. 

“When you were little you didn’t realize…you said ‘Mum’s magic!’ She wasn’t. She could see you, sitting here from the attic studio.” He reached out and stoked her hair the way he had when she was quite young and couldn’t seem to grow any hair at all. “She’d stand up there drawing you out here, kicking the dirt, whipping and branches and curled up tight like now.”

“I never saw those,” she said even though her face felt like a bomb, packed with dense explosives.

“No, she said they were private. Just for the two of you and when the fight was over…your time served…” he whisked his hand away and made some sort of whistle. 

“Oh,” and her heart broke more. How was it that the people who loved her, understood her best always left her alone? Mum, Boo, him. 

“There were a few when we cleaned out the attic but…”

She sat up straight, a new tension. “Cleaned it out?”

“Yes, for storage.”

“And you didn’t think Claire and I would want our mother’s art work, her tools, her things?”

“Well… you’re not an artist. Claire’s not.”

“So you gave them to her. She cleaned out our mother’s studio and did what she wanted with all her things and never even gave us a chance to save any of it, any of _our mother_ for ourselves.” She was shrieking now, she knew, tears running unchecked down her face again and she twisted the kerchief between her fingers. 

“What, what fucking is it that has you still letting this woman sleep in Mum’s bed? What earthly possession could there possibly be? The orgasms cannot be that good!” 

And her father was silent. 

Then silent some more. 

“Noooooo.” She gulped, tears drying rapidly. “Noooo… Really?” 

He could not make eye contact. He didn’t fidget and jerk away every few seconds. 

“Fuck,” because well... fuck. She’ll never get rid now. “Fuck.” 

Still, there was an element of womanly pride—{Ew, ick, horrors; not her}—because a woman—even this one—fucking that well and enthusiastically—{nearly publicly}—as she gets on in years is actually fucking remarkable—{and why the fuck should that be?} It’s a strange feeling: pride anywhere near the bane of her existence.

But the sting of her mother’s lost art was worse and the sting of her father’s betrayal of all three of the women who loved him dearly for one who got him off could not be erased by one measly handkerchief. She walked away from him, out of the garden, round the house and to the street, leaving Belinda’s sweater, her purse, anything else she might have brought with her. She still had her mobile though. 

She used the company Belinda kept and went to the apartment. Curled up in Belinda’s enormous bed she called and started to relate her terrible evening—a little editing here and there about the men of the night—and only got half way through when she was interrupted.

“Darling,” Belinda said in a voice usually reserved for employees who fucked up. “I am sorry if you are looking for a shoulder to cry on just now. And, while I do appreciate that because of the time difference this is not a middle of the night crisis, it has become a middle of the very important meeting crisis. The very important meeting I flew all the way to Tokyo to attend. So… I know it is going to sound callus and unloving but it seems to me you’d be better off calling your sister who is at least partly to blame for your current state. Unless there is a critical feature I am missing, like you need an ambulance, then it will need to wait. I will call you later. Get some sleep my love.” 

Belinda clicked of after a half syllable and she was left feeling like it had been a voice mail message and not a conversation. 

She looked at her phone again. Thought about calling Claire who would be devastated to hear their mother’s art was gone or subsumed, who would feel horrendously guilty and not have Klare to comfort her. She thought about telling Boo who would have offered to destroy all of her godmother’s things. There would have been some elaborate description of how maybe destroying the cast of her father’s penis would have broken the witch’s hold and he would have returned to the father she only saw glimpses of.

Then she thought about calling him. She’d no real idea of his voice on the phone so she didn’t get far. Her brain did helpfully supply what it was like to be held by him though. In her heart she could imagine him listening to all her anguish, holding her as she cried it all out, telling her what to do. What to wear, where to go, who to talk to so that she would never have to feel so unloved and alone again. 

She willed him to text her. Something innocuous like _okay?_ And she would reply with the sobbing emoji and he would ask where she was and come right over. It would be okay that it was Belinda’s apartment because they would sit on her painfully modern ouch until she cried herself out and then he’d tuck her into the cold bed and stay until she fell asleep only they both would, wrapped up in each other, heads on the same pillow, sleep well past dawn, well past her father returning her things to the doorman, well past Belinda coming home and Claire finding out about the studio. Well past everything.

Only none of that would happen because he wouldn’t text her, and she would fall asleep alone dreaming of what would happen when he did.


	9. “Dear God, I think the stapler is one of your greatest invention Ruth M.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Loving you isn’t a sin.”_ Author's Note: It's that damn tomato tin again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: It's that damn tomato tin again.

“Darling, just take the food,” Belinda said distractedly down the line. 

“I really don’t think I should.” She really, truly did not. “Call the delivery and cancel.”

“Look, he unbanned your blaspheming soul; go. Earn brownie points with God—you never know when you’ll need them.” Belinda talked away from the receiver at someone. “Must dash, darling. I’ll be home tomorrow. Thank you, kisses.”

She was still anxious, in a bit of a huff, when she got there. It was beyond awkward trying to get everything out of the cab by herself and then across into the church but in all honesty she had survived far, far worse. 

There was some young blonde woman in the room bustling about and exuding warmth and friendliness and all of it rang a bit hard. {People like this make me wish I could vomit on demand.} She would have left almost immediately—unscathed even—but the chipper tone in which the woman {Girl, really, look at her!} said, “I’ll help you unpack it dear,” like it was a gift stayed her feet.

In the middle of it the priest entered and the two began talking right by the door about inanities and admin for the pantry and other sorts. The only way to leave was to ask them to move. She’d rather a sink hole. Which was about when she saw the perky one reach out and stroke her priest’s bicep with a little squeeze.

{The _bloody fuck._ }

She’d been singing WHAM! in her head to keep from following their conversation too closely so she’d no idea the context, but she knows the intent, she’d lived the intent. {I sure as fuck did a better job keeping my hands to myself in public.}

It were several beats before she could pick up the thread and by that time they were discussing some bit of news and biblical implications. The girl who so clearly wanted to bone her priest, Bone Girl if you will, said, “I guess it’s like the bible says, those who live by the flesh, die by the flesh.”

And she didn’t keep herself from interrupting, “Wasn’t it those who live in accordance with the flesh think about what the flesh desires. And those who live by the spirit, live in peace and… don’t die? because even when they die they live in the spirit?… all a bit barmy.”

“You don’t…” Bone Girl stuttered, “You’re not…?”

“Religious?” she asked distractedly over her shoulder. “God no. I’m only here because the woman who eats my pussy regularly asked me to drop this lot off, so,” she placed a can in a pile with an intentional plunk—she’d stopped paying attention to what she was putting where.

“Right, well, Father. Thank you for the reading,” she waved some packet of papers at him. “I’ll see you at Theology on Tap, shall I?”

“Cheers, Becky. See you then.” {Becky?}

They embraced. {Is this some twisted version of Vanity Fair? Is Becky Sharp after priests these days? Are there going to be zombies?}

She put the last of the cans down and stared into the middle distance, seeing over and over how he was not surprised by her touch, did not shy away. Her mind wondered if she’d been replaced so easily, if maybe this was the man she hadn’t seen, if Becky was shudderingly a breaking of his vows he found acceptable, somehow keepable. The maelstrom that had been chewing away at her gut before began to churn in earnest. When the priest held out a carryall of a deeply repugnant yellow she took it and crossed to another area to begin blindly putting food in the bag. She’d the idea he was talking to her but it took some time to be able to make out first his voice—“Cheers, Becky. See you then.”—let alone clue into what he was saying. It mustn’t have been much or required her participation because he didn’t seem interested in continuing after a bit of a ramble. 

He cleared his throat, shuffled around the tables putting food in bags before eventually starting back up with a non sequitur.

“You’re still reading it then?” {The bible he gave me.}

“Only when I want to remember how superior my intellect is to yours.” She let the can of peaches land with a thunk into the bag she was packing, added punctuation. 

He smiled, seemingly amused but not pleased. “One of God’s miracles for sure.” 

{God must love a kiss ass.} “Hmm,” she sounded noncommittally. “My being superior to you is God’s work?”

“It’s all his work, but I meant you wanting to remember me at all.”

{ _Oh, for fuck’s sake._ } 

“Would you stop it?”

“Stop what?” {Breathing in his precious little church? Not being all cute and flirty for a change? Thinking his faith is shi—} A silver streak whizzed past her face and she jumped back with a shout as it bounced off the wall after leaving a gouge in the plaster.

“ _That_. Stop _that_. The mouthing-off and snarking like I’m not here, like I can’t bloody see you sassing like some third form pissant.” His anger had him stalking over to her and her retreating blindly backwards to escape a fury she’d never seen from him, hadn’t expected to lay inside his priestly garb. “Pulling faces when my back is turned like a child who can’t stand to be scolded. You want to be angry? Be angry. _Hate me_ if it makes it easier, but don’t treat me like I don’t see you,” he continued to shout while she backed into something tall and solid that rocked not at all when she clapped into it. “I have always _fucking bloody seen you._ ” And there he seemed to finally be out of breath, the two of them against some cupboard older than Jubilee Bridge. “Haven’t I?” he asked in a whisper.

She didn’t hate him, didn’t hate that he had always seen her, but hated that she couldn’t hide. She hated that he wouldn’t let her hide in all the ways that had worked with everyone else, even Boo—for good or ill. But here she was once again splayed open before a man who would take her but not keep her. Her lips trembled as she moved them to retort—no fucking idea what would come out of her mouth.

Instead of the vitriolic glory that had been her saving grace with the world as it battered against her all these years there was nothing. A dry croak, a fat, hot tear down her cheek and he crumpled, apologizing, into the hollow, heavy thing behind her. “Damnit,” he said, slapping it. “Sorry,” he said pulling back and going to turn away, but she had a fistful of the rope at his waist, the sort a Friar Tuck type would have needed to make the ridiculous dresses look less like a tent but were out of place on fit priests like hers. _Hers_. 

While they stood like that in the florescent-lit, musty smelling room that had probably been part crypt fifty years prior—and a completely different part of her brain marveled at how strange and perverted it was that she had particularly strong feelings about what sorts of cassocks and girdles looked most becoming on the priest she preferred above all naked—she felt them landing solidly back in the aggressive stalemate they’d only just escaped except this time she was the one whose rage was building. 

She pulled back on the cincture, grimacing, dragging him towards her and he put a hand over hers, fingers working to loosen her grip. “You don’t get to give me permission any more. You don’t get to bless my union with Belinda, you don’t get to say it’s fine if I hate you.” She wanted to bite him and not in the sexy way. “I want to hate you. I have prayed to hate you because then this feeling would go away.” He had his hands up beside her head to brace against the structure behind her as she twisted the belt to bring him closer still to her teeth. “But no, you had to be priestly and good and we couldn’t date until I’d learned what made you weak and human and mean like normal people. Oh no.” Now she was more of an aggressor, a pursuer and she walked towards him and he stepped—shuffled more like—back from her. “So now there’s this potential to love you but it never plays out, it just hovers there, this constant question and I’ll never know if you’re just as flawed and hateable as all the rest of them because I can’t bloody have you, I can’t eviscerate you the way I’d like because you sit here in your little castle with its little moat and pack fucking picnic baskets for the needy like a goddamned pretty princess.”

“Oh _fuck you_ ,” he growled into her face returning the fight in her eyes.

“Fuck _you_.” She wasn’t sure when cussing at each other turned into actual fucking but in the way of it there was tussling and blood, more blasphemous cursing, and his metal zipper snagging in her pubes, scraping her raw, as they wrestled to climax both pumping furiously without thought for the falling tins of food or how they might have ended up under a table. 

Their heart rates slowed but they didn’t pull apart. They kept together beneath the table, the long cloth draped down to the floor around them in some vague mockery of a country idyll, stroking the flesh they had excavated—a patch of his chest, the top of her thigh. The peace of the moment was sharp against the ferocity of before. There was a relaxing, a sense that the pretense has at last been given up—for good?—and the effort of it need not be maintained. They smiled, to themselves, at each other, while reality remained at a distance, just the other side of the old Christmas bazar décor.

“What, exactly, did you throw at me?” she asked laughingly, still drunk on the three rapid orgasms.

“Er…soup? Yeah, pretty sure it was soup.” They both tittered like children in a fort. “Though,” he fingered her ear, “it was less at you and more at that general side of the room.”

“Yeah,” she propped her head up on his sternum and didn’t keep it from digging in, “you nearly hit me.”

“Er-ugh” he frown, and grimaced and bared his teeth at once. “Sorry,” he said and kissed her head, smoothed the hair he’d disturbed. Suddenly he curled into her, buried his head against her, and squeezed her with considerable might before groaning, “God.”

“Yes, so you’ve said,” she meant as a reference to his calls during their recent escapades.

“I can’t say no to this.” He squeezed again before releasing, arms still loosely around her, his head on the tiles. “You know it.” 

“Oh, Father, you say no to me all the time.”

“Don’t, please. Not yet.” She felt a strip come away from her heart. Whether it was scar tissue or not she couldn’t tell, but it struck her as monstrously unfair that after all this time, all the words and feelings between them, he could, they could, still be so willing to pretend that they could ever have more than moments. Stolen moments, she thought, because he was stealing them from his faith, God, his “vocation” and she was stealing them from him, pushing those friendly if not innocent gestures into sexual connotations. She was not content with only a part of him and he would not take more except where it was already too late. 

“Why not, I mean in for a penny, in for a pound, right? Have to confess now anyway.” And because she was oozing something somewhere—her heart but also her vagina which was starting to feel more than regularly sore—she saw no reason not to return the favor and began pulling physically away as she was mentally. 

“Oye, you,” he called placing a hand over hers on his chest, “Where did your mind go? You were right her with me and now you're mad at me while I am literally still inside you.” He must’ve seen on her face that she meant to rectify it and gripped her hip, a request, a desire, not a warning. “Loving you isn’t a sin.”

“Just fucking me.” She shifted intentionally, and they were apart again.

“That’s more complicated.” She went to move farther away and again he stayed her. “I’m being honest. You’re in a relationship, and I took a very intentional vow. We’re both doing a lot of coveting, and that’s more of a problem.”

He didn’t take his eyes off her so she looked away, tried to see through the green sheet to the stacks of food beyond. “Are we?”

“Are we what, love?”

“Don’t,” she said without being able to withhold the rawness in her voice.

“Are we what?” He corrected.

“Coveting?”

“I can’t speak for you, but I am. For me the release isn’t there. I know you’re with her and I’m alone. I want you to be happy, but I’m jealous at the same time. It’s all very vexed.” He took a hand from her back and tucked it beneath his head, tilted his face up to see her. “I don’t know what I am praying for half the time when it comes to you. ‘Dear God, bring her peace. Bring her acceptance. Bring her to me—wait, no. Dear God, help her build a family that will cherish her, see her for who she is—as I do—and walk beside her—as I want to,’” he said with their foreheads together, hand slipping across her flesh. “‘Dear God, touch her heart, touch her soul, touch her _glorious_ tits,’” he said doing as he asked of God. “‘Dear God,’” he looked up into the underside of the folding table, “‘thank you for these _glorious tits._.” 

They were laughing again, rolling into each other—and a tomato tin they failed to notice—again, his penis inside her again, coming against each other again—was rolling cross the floor totally unheeded. 

When the sweat on her neck was cooling she asked, “How much longer?”

“When does she get home?” he returned tucking hair behind her ear. 

“Tomorrow. Becky?”

He kissed her, squeezed her to him, and then pulled back confused. “Becky?” 

“Isn’t she your new temptation?”

“ _Fuck no_. What?” His tone was cross and hurt and confused. “Are you joking? Were you not just here?”

“She certainly thinks something is going on between you.”

“She’s a perfectly lovely person but what she may want has very little to do with me.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. 

“Fuck you. I actually can keep it in my pants,” he looked at the state of them, “all current pants to the contrary,” he said and laughed. “You were hardly the first person to find me attractive you know, even since becoming a priest. And Becky, as misguided as her attention often is, is unlikely to be the last. I don’t know what it is about women and a man in a collar.”

“It’s not all collars mind. But the whole celibacy bit is an enticing challenge,” he nodded at her explanation and she ran fingers slowly down his neck. “And then there’s the gorgeous surprise of you,” she continued and kissed him, nuzzled into the side of his neck while her hand kept caressing him. She wanted just a little bit longer, any way to draw it out. She wanted him to come home with her, spend the night in her bed, but was afraid of the way his face would shut down and leave her alone again. 

Soon they were kissing again and he growled as he pulled away. “God, I want to but I cannot do this again on the floor. I am really too old and out of practice for this.”

“All evidence to the contrary,” she said scraping her teeth across the stubble on his chin. “Come over,” she said with her eyes closed and a sincere if indistinct prayer in her heart. _Please, please, please, please, please._

He kissed her again, ravenously. “Say,” he panted when he’d ripped away, “say I do, when does it stop? This furious need… I don’t—” he cut himself off.

“Tomorrow. We’ll both have work and I’ll have to go to the flat.”

“Oh, God. You live together.” She watched his face fall and felt certain it was starting, the end, again.

“No, truly. I’m there a lot when she is but she’s not often. There’s traveling,” she waves it away. “And you know we have an arrangement that has nothing to do with you.” She pet his face. “I’m not asking for answers or tomorrow just… are you ready to give this up again?”

He looked at her so sadly, hand rubbing placatingly through her hair, the inevitable shining out of his face. He looked at her for a long time, a slow shake to his head every so often. “Up we get,” he said eventually, no clear answer given and he crawled out and then helped her from under the table. 

Their clothes were wet, cold, off-kilter and itchy and their bodies were achy and sore. He held her hand and surveyed the damage to the room. “You best go. I’ll clean up.” He bent down to pick up now dented tins from the floor. “No, really. You head home,” he said, taking her hands from where she was trying to help and kissed them.

She thought this was her goodbye, that he would act like it had never happened the next time she saw him, so she walked slowly to the door. “I’ll see you later,” he said softly just as she reached it. She looked back to him in shock as he put more tins on the table and glanced over his shoulder at her and tried to smile. 

Her heart was both broken and filled with hope that he meant it. She waited anxiously by the door until late that evening when he knocked softly and stepped over the threshold to kiss her without preamble or hesitation. She felt consumed over and over again and yet not drained. 

Tomorrow comes and he leaves before dawn with a whisper to her hair she feels but can’t hear and then, when she’s more than a little raw, Belinda goes down on her and notices. “Overly enthusiastic was he?” {Rough and angry and beyond _glorious_.} “Let me kiss it better for you, darling,” she says and does her best.


	10. “Dear God, I think about you sometimes even when I’m not praying. Elliott”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It pops up like a meat timer in the Christmas ham._

The world flips its poles weekly. She feels like two people inhabiting the same mind. She’s cool and confident with Belinda, their friends, her colleagues or a heated fury alone with him. Belinda’s posh, hyper clean and organized flat or her overstuffed, somewhat musty rooms. 

She feels alive in a way she never has before. Even the brief blaze of last time is nothing to the continental forest fire now. There’s no explanation she can give for how it happened—how it keeps happening. He’s made no pronouncements, they still don’t talk about tomorrow, and the closest they get to acknowledging that they are on borrowed time is when one of them asks, “How long?” 

It pops up like a meat timer in the Christmas ham. 

Until something else pops up and the world flips sideways even faster. 

It changed again at a work event for Belinda’s firm. Cocktails and fancy dress and trays and trays she didn’t have to plate or carry. She relished that feeling of shiny chrome crystal. She had been having a lovely time, most charming foot forward, most adult, when she saw someone’s hand—deep red nail polish—in Belinda’s strawberry blonde hair. She’s watching, confused, concerned, when there seems to be some sort of tussle and Belinda wins, guiding the other woman—young, bottle blonde, scorching—out of the room, their lipstick smudged in a way she is very familiar with. 

The gutted feeling surprises her. She’d no right to it—very well aware what she was doing when Belinda was away—but she couldn’t cork it up, smile, charm, and mingle the night away. {Bloody fuck. Is what Boo felt? Knowing and wondering and feeling not enough?}

She excused herself and followed them, the path she saw them take and found them in some tucked away courtyard—glorified airshaft—where Belinda railed at the woman who looked more like a pouting teen then anything. She hung back, not looking to dial up the drama, still nursing the tear she’d found inside herself. 

Belinda left first and headed back to the party when she spotted her standing there. Neither of them stupid, facial expressions and long looks did most of the talking.

“Can… can we just go back,” Belinda asked, “make our excuses, and go home? We can talk everything out there, as much as you need. Please?”

She couldn’t voice much objection, felt off-center just hearing Belinda call it their home on top of everything else, so she nodded and stayed out of the reach of Belinda’s arm. 

Once the front was well performed for those at the party that might have seen things go amiss they did leave, went to the flat, and had it out. 

It started calmly enough but soon she yelled, “What the _bloody_ hell!”

“Look,” Belinda placated. “Yes, we had sex. But that’s all it was: sex. I did not give her my number,” she counted off on her fingers, “ask to see her again, or ever intend that she should cross my path. It was an interlude, a tasty morsel, a snack in a café.” {Interesting minimization tactic, yeah?} “Not what we’ve got, at least not what I think we’ve got.” 

She panicked. What did they have? What did she think they had? Was it what Belinda thought that head? What did she have with him?

“Look,” Belinda continued, “when I told you I didn’t mind if every now and again there was a penis you needed to visit, I meant it. It’s a body part I don’t care to have in my bed ever that you seem quite fond of. That’s what I was picturing a snack, a trip to a Szechwan grill when you know I can’t stand those tables.” {She’s awfully fond of food metaphors tonight.} 

“Right, so… what?” she asked Belinda. “This is an open relationship?” 

“God no.” Belinda rolled her eyes and started removing jewelry onto the vanity. “Look in my experience the word that replaces ‘open’ rather quickly is ‘ended.’ This relationship is just getting going.” She looked imploringly at her, “I don’t want it to be over. I’ve never picked someone I wanted to see again. I hope you haven’t either.” {Shit.} “It’s… When it’s an open relationship and you find yourself seeing someone you also want to have a relationship with the question becomes… do I want to risk the relationship I’ve already got to see where this goes? To have one more night with this person? Because eventually the answer is yes,” {She has no fucking idea} “and we’re just starting out. How much of a head start have we got on any new relationship?” {Christ, what if it’s not new?} “Look, if you’re not comfortable with me finding very temporary companionship when I travel then, fine.”

{It’s conveniently unspoken that this then calls into question my nights of penis tapas when she’s out of town. She’s not dump enough to allude to it—her face is crystal; look at it—but we both know it’s there.} “When we’re apart we can snack leisurely?”

“Yes,” Belinda responded emphatically, stepping closer.

“But we… take our dinners at home?” She fought to keep her voice even, the rapid panic and heartrending questions out of it.

“Ha. Yes.” Belinda took her arms, dragged her hands slowly down them to squeeze the wrists she found.

They kissed and made up. Slow, soft sex she could barely feel, couldn’t really remember as her mind spun round and round. 

Which relationship was a risk to which?

She’d pulled him back to her under that table because she and Belinda had an arrangement. They convinced themselves enough that it was somehow not a danger to her relationship, that it was more sex then love, that somehow it wouldn’t ruin everything to do it again and again and again.

Because it’s still there even after that long night of reconciliation with Belinda, that bellyful of fire she has for him that smolders under her skin and melts the rest of the world away.


	11. “Dear God, Instead of Letting people die and haveing to Make new ones why don’t you just Keep the ones you got now? Jane”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Nothing gold can stay after all, certainly not this Ponyboy of them._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Sorry. This is going to hurt.

She stood there, her phone in her hand, her finger hovering over the send button watching the cursor blink dully.

_Home. Coming over?_ [Blink] [Blink] [Blink]

It had becoming code for, ‘I’ve got a few days. Do you?’ 

[Blink]

He generally sent quick a ‘You around?” 

[Blink]

She wanted to see him, needed to see him. Needed to feel all the rest of the mess she was making wiped out until morning. She kept telling herself if she could see him it would clear her head, help her make that decision, reach the answer. 

[Blink]

Because for him it would still be God and she was willing to share if He was. But that feeling in her chest when she’s realized Belinda was kissing someone else… Boo’s face, her eyes when…

[Blink]

She could never send another text again. She could let him hover in uncertainty and aloneness, feeling abandoned and forgotten. Be part of the karma that was visited upon him.

[Blink]

There were times that was all she had wanted but she wondered if she still did. If his pain would be her pain that way that it was between them in bed when they shut the world out and let pieces of themselves be seen.

[Blink]

“How’d you get this then?” she’d asked drawing her finger across a line of a scar towards his abs.

“ _Fuck._ Umm…iron, I think.”

“What?” She’d felt her concern outweigh her desire.

“Mum, was drunk, doing the shirts and we were playing. She stepped away—don’t know why—we tumbled into the legs,” he’d waved a hand as though to show her where in the room it was. “Knocked it all down and she was pissed. I mean pissed royal. Hollering and waving it around. Talking bout how we’d have burned the place down, pointed at the burn on the rug, reached out and gave us the same. Fuck, Declan caught it the worst. You know, flat,” he’d put his hand so on his stomach. “But I was smaller so it was just,” he’d grazed the side of a finger against himself, right over the wound without even looking.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” he’d looked at her.

“Jesus,” she’d looked back, seen the ghost of a smile at her blasphemous invocation. “Well, that’s a great mood killer.” She’d flopped gracelessly next to him and later had found herself running a thump over the scar. Hurt for the child, the man.

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

[Blink]

“ _Fuck!_ ” she screaming into her sitting room and threw the mobile at the sofa. She was collapsed next to it when it buzzed later.

_Yeah. 9?_

{Fuck.}

She must’ve hit the bloody thing mid-throw or something. 

The choice made, though not entirely by her, she tried to drown her panic in the wine and pack of smokes she bought at Sainsbury’s after seeing Belinda off that morning. He found her there—the bins behind the kitchen, just one after the other like some twit who’d just left school; she might be sick—head popping out.

“There you are,” he said taking her in.

“Is it nine?” she asked, genuinely surprised at the time.

“No, early,” he shrugged and the rest of him followed out the door. “You alright?” He eyed her warily and took the smoke from between her lips and put his own on it. She’d no lipstick left on but it looked like they landed in the same place, like he wanted them to. He slid a hand down her arm, as Belinda had the night before and the reminder did not help her settle either though she could tell that was his intent. “What’s wrong?”

She wanted to say something but her easy wit and lies tangled in the questions in her mind. She kicked the small pile of evidence on the ground.

“Claire, your family, they’re alright?”

She nodded.

“Belinda?”

She swallowed.

“She hurt? In hospital?”

She shook her head. “Berlin,” closed her eyes. Belinda being in Berlin brought her no joy any longer. 

“A row?”

She grimaced.

“About… me?”

She grunted, took the cigarette back and sucked deeply. “Not… not technically, no.”

“Then what?” He hovered away from her, waiting it seemed to decide what he wanted to do with what she needed.

“She’d slept with someone while she was…God, I don’t know when, some trip,” she shrugged. “But the woman showed up at a work do and made a scene.”

“Oh, so it was about this other woman?”

“Not… exactly. When we made our arrangement we did not discuss it applying to Belinda when she traveled.”

“You were hurt by it.”

She nodded. She finished the cigarette and added its bits to the pile at her feet. 

He looked at the pile, her, it again and laughed a little bitterly. “Fuck, you must feel sick.”

“A bit.”

“You love her.”

“Rather more than I expected it seems.”

She watched him looking at her. The shifts behind his eyes were unreadable—as so much of him had been during these trysts that she pretended were about sex and not about how much more alive she felt with him, but then her walls were still standing too. “I’ll go then,” he said eventually, sad. 

She shook her head frantically, closed her eyes against his confusion—her own was more than enough—and sighed to keep the tears in. 

“What am I doing here?” he asked. She’d invited him after all.

“I don’t know….” She started to cry anyway. “It’s all so fucked up.” She wiped at her face and he stepped towards her again. “I don’t want to lose either of you. Losing her would be awful but to be without you again, without any part of you… I can’t do it. God, I don’t know how I survived it the first time.” She reached for him, found his sleeve and used it to pull him closer. He let her. “There’s just still so much of you inside me, all this love that just won’t go away. Even when it would save me to get rid, save my relationship, I need to give it to you or I feel like I’ll break under the weight of it.” They were closer with every step, the tears on both their faces, mingling, their lips converging, words between touches.

“I know,” he said with such desperation she felt the pull from her liver to sooth him and she needed to be soothed. “Fuck, _I know_. Fuck,” he swore and wrapped round her tight as they devoured each other. 

The frantic edges to their couplings were still there but the practice of time and space had them working their way onto more comfortable surfaces and most often a soft, stable one—a bed this time—as they pulled at clothing and hair and flesh and their need for each other. She sat astride him, rocked down on his dick as they kept each other close, arms and fingers and knees and feet pulling them closer, nipples brushing together, lips, noses as she looked down into his eyes and he looked back. “I love you,” tumbled out again and again, as desperate to be said for all it had been shut in. 

After they shuddered and clawed to a stop, he tipped them sideways and pulled the nearest thing over them. “Don’t go,” she whispered against his temple and he mumbled, “You either,” into her clavicle.

They stayed like that as her neck ached and his arm went numb. 

“How long?” he asked eventually.

“I don’t know,” she said answering a new question. Because she had learned over and over that it always went bad. Nothing gold can stay after all, certainly not this Ponyboy of them. “I don’t… I want so much. I don’t think…”

“What?” he asked, curiosity and worry both plain.

“I don’t think I’m allowed to have them.”

“Why not?” She turned into the way he stroked her hair, short nails scoring her scalp a little.

She wanted to look away, to go away, to not answer. “I… I’m a bit shit.” She chewed her lips and made herself look him in the eye. “I fuck it, every time. Every good thing.”

He kissed her. “Yeah, me too.”

“Doomed then?”

They laughed, kissed, moved to more comfortable positions. 

“This is what faith is.”

“How do you mean?”

“To want and know we deserve love anyway is faith. See, we destroy things. Humans do. It’s not just us, promise. It’s in every confession I take what a bloody mess people are—and there are loads worse choices we could be making. No matter what people let you see of them, how put together they seem, they’re just like us.”

“Claire too.”

“Hmm?”

“Married to Martin, loathing him, wanting Klare.”

“That was awful. Could barely keep a straight face all dinner.”

“I know it’s terrible. But she’s so happy. I thought she was such a grump all those years because she liked it. Turns out she was just miserable and lonely.”

“Like everyone else.”

But she wasn’t at that moment. Maybe a little miserable— _Belinda’s in Berlin_ —but not much, less than usual, and she was not only not alone but not lonely. “What happens now?”

He stroked her face and his eyes got wet. “I don’t know.” She blinked and felt a tear on her cheek, terrified it was starting again. “I know the shoulds. I _should_ let you go, so you can be with the woman you love—”

“I love you.”

“—who can be with you without reservation. I _should_ go back to the rectory. I should go to confession. I _should_ keep my commitment to God and His church.”

“But _shouldn’t_ you be happy? Shouldn’t your God want you to not feel lonely, to feel love and be loved.”

“Yes, He does and I do.” He shrugged. “I am happy enough in my work and, alright, a bit lonely but I feel such love, I feel your love even when you’re not there. I feel His love.”

“So we go back? To the way it was? More banishment but this time forever? That’s what you’re saying?”

He leaned his forehead on her chin, breathed deeply, and seemed unable to do otherwise. “It’s what we should do,” he was able to say eventually. “I don’t want to be without either. I don’t want to be the cause of your misery but… that’s how this goes, yeah? That’s why we haven’t said…any of this... before now. I…fuck, leaving the church…?”

“It’s still God.”

“It’s always God because He is everything. Don’t you see? If I choose you I am choosing God. If I choose the church I am choosing God. If I choose to become some bum on the street occasionally swapping sex for drugs I am choosing God. Because I know He is all things I can ever be without Him or within Him. I wouldn’t want to be in a world where that isn’t true because I owe the world to Him, as beautiful and fucked as it is. I owe you to Him—”

“Bloody don’t.”

“—as much joy and pain as your mere existence brings me—to say nothing of what touching you does to me.”

“Then do both. Touch me and love God but, fuck, touch me,” she demands.

And he does, “Always,” he says into her open mouth as they head towards another long, desperate roll.

They are so caught up in each other that the knock is nearly dismissed. “Guh,” he pulls away, “go, quick.” She giggles and crawls over him; he slaps her rear on the way by, “Hurry.”

Only Belinda is at the door and the joy tumbling through her leaves skid marks in its halt. “Darling,” Belinda says and slips the knob easily through numb fingers on her way in. “Oh, it bloody reeks in here. Have many did you have?” she waves a hand in her face. “I can see I was right then. You were upset about me leaving.”

“I…” she belatedly shuts the door, pulls the robe closer over her nakedness. “You went to Berlin.”

“Yes, and given everything that happened last night I thought you’d be sitting here wretched and sure I was fucking around.” { _Shit!_ } “God,” she swipes her fingers down her neck, not leaving the tell-tale red marks that come so easily to her skin, “what a horrid night and it’d be all my fault. I couldn’t sit in my hotel room thinking about it and miserable too so….” She lets her arms drop and reaches for the woman she came to see, has yet to realize she’s not quite there.

“Darling?” Belinda asks and she can see when it begins to dawn. Maybe it’s the robe, maybe there are bite marks or beard burn or the smell of sweat and semen, but Belinda gets there just the same. “Oh,” she drops her hand a steps back. “I guess you weren’t as upset as I thought.” She casts about as though she has to pick up her possessions but she hasn’t taken off her coat or brought a bag so she just looks lost. “There’s someone here.”

“Yes,” she tells her even though it’s not a question. “It’s… it’s not—”

She laughs; it’s a bit bitter on the edges. “I needn’t have bothered then.” She must realize that there’s nothing she could be leaving behind in that moment she wants and says, “I’ll see myself out, shall I, let you enjoy your snack?”

“It’s not like that. We were just—” She cuts herself off before she can say _ending it_ because she’s not sure it’s true and she sees Belinda’s shoulders and face shift into battle armor.

She looks over to see him standing there like a martyr, clothes rumpled and face determined to take his share of the punishment.

“You…? A bloody fucking priest,” Belinda says in a calm tone that must belie the storm about to break. “Your family priest? You are a rare one, aren’t you?” She turns to leave and then her head comes up and she facing them again. “You were just what?”

“What?”

“‘It’s not like that. We were just…’” Belinda repeats dispassionately which terrifies her even more, “what?”

“Ending it,” he says like it’s going to help from behind her, closer, in the line of fire now. 

“Ending?” She feels the shoe drop more than she can see it, knows that every moment from this on is going to leave battle scars on them and likely the furniture. “So this merry scene, this little tryst here the very night I leave isn’t a one off. So how long, hmm? How long have you been bed hopping between us?”

“Fuck!” She lets go of the robe and can feel the chill of it coming open but is too inured to war to heed it. “Yes, alright. _Months_. God, years I have been—” she hums trying to get the warrior back under control. “You don’t understand. It’s from before…before we even met and—”

“You’ve been fucking him this whole time,” a vein stands out in Belinda’s neck as she hollers at her.

“No!” they both respond. 

“It’s complicated,” she offers and puts a hand to her forehead to disguise the glance in his direction, the memory. “I mean, Jesus of course it is, he’s a fucking priest. And we weren’t. It was over. I mean over and then that _stupid_ Becky—”

“Sleeping with her too, were you?”

“No,” they both respond.

“Oh God,” her head’s throbbing.

“That statement must have a whole realm of meaning now.”

“Fuck,” she says again rubbing her skull beneath the flesh, trying to get enough reprieve to think and not just slash and burn. 

“Look,” he says stepping between them like a dead man, “I, fuck this is shit weird, I know this isn’t my place and being at all priesty given the— … is an extra layer of fuckery but, if you’ll just listen. You truly care for each other and this,” he waves between their recent nakedness, “has nothing to do with that. Her affection, her love for you is real. I beg of you to believe that, to believe in what the two of you shared and not let this wipe that out.”

“Unbelievable,” she says. “It is wholly unbelievable that you are going to stand there after having been fucking my girlfriend for months—”

“That wasn’t about you,” he reiterates.

“—and tell me to trust in her love for me. What do you know about trust? Fucking around on God, on all those people who think you’re so good and holy, handing out food to the poor and downtrodden, you fucking parasite.”

“Don’t, God,” she says nearly shaking in agony between her headache and the shattering her heart is doing. “Stop. Just stop.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Belinda returns, rips the door open like she’d take it from the hinges to leave, and does.

“No, Belinda,” she calls and follows her out so that she’s in the street, barefoot, barely in the robe that covers a well-loved and sexed body. This is what her family thinks of her, what Godmother meant at that party. This is the mess they expect from her life. Two lovers—{Finally people who love me and I can’t keep either of them.}—a row on the street, and a gasp from nude.

She’s running when she grabs Belinda’s arm down from trying to hail a cab.

“What is wrong with you?” she yells.

“So many, many things. Please,” she begs, not even knowing what for.

“Fuck,” Belinda yells into the unseeable stars. “Is he right?” She pulls her arms away, resettles her coat. “Do you love me? Can you love someone and still—” she gestures roughly at the cottage, “fuck.”

“Yes. I do. I know it’s shit. God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry but I do,” she repeats as she tries for Belinda’s arm again. “I do. Believe me, please.” She says her face finally close to Belinda’s some measure of relief in her brain her heart.

Then quietly, a tremor in both of them, Belinda asks, “Do you love him?”

There is no other answer and they both know it. This is the nail and the coffin, two coffins really, so she catches a sob before she responds with a wet, honest, “Yes.”

She sees Belinda’s lips tremble and pucker with revulsion as she pulls away and says with vitriol, “Then go. He can have you; I’m done. I am done with your childish whining and neediness,” she takes a step back from her, “your desire to not just be loved but _feel_ loved and indulged _constantly_ rather than,” with a bitter laugh, “ever accept fault and move on. Your apology is shit,” she says with tears on her face. “It’s shit!” is Belinda’s parting from meters down the road, clearly determined not to wait for a taxi to happen by. 

She dumbly, half unseeing turns toward the door, crying and by some miracle lands right into his chest. As she crumples against it, tears so big a single one seems to fill her whole eye, he wraps something around her. It’s large and warm against her back as he holds her to him in the street. 

Later he’ll take her inside, start a bath and make her tea, ministering to her in her need, loving her—if not in fact as a father, at least in this instance, in deed—as he’ll change the bed, tuck her in, and lay with her and she’ll cry herself to sleep. He’ll profess his love into her hair, her neck, her shoulder as a balm that won’t work. She’ll beg him not to say it, but what she’ll mean is not to say good-bye. She’ll know that’s what he means, that love is always the last reminder he gives her before he goes. Words, deeds, they’ve been his gifts of love. 

In the morning she’ll wake alone with bright sun shining in the window and eyes dry and gritty. “Good-bye,” she’ll say to the empty room around her.


	12. “Dear God – Please put a – nother Holiday between Christmas and Easter. There is nothing good in there now. Ginny”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Every passenger on and off shifts the bodies around her; by the time they’re in Kilburn she finds herself transported._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry. Okay, I’m sorry for two things. One, this ending is… well, I’ve been trying to warn you all along. Two, there were supposed to be two endings for this story: this one and an alternate chapter twelve titled “Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother but what I prayed for was a puppy Joyce.” But every time I tried to write it, the damn thing turned into a scene for “Hearthwife.” It might still happen. I just haven’t solved the how yet. There also might be some Priest POV one shots of this series.

It’s a brilliant spring day and the sun flashing off bus windows and shop fronts has been getting into her eyes, making her long for sunglasses. She tries to blame the tears on that but it’s been a shit day and the chances are slim she believes herself. She boards the bus at Marble Arch because she clearly hates herself. It may be the closest one to the party—her attended at birthday do of Harry’s daughter only further confirms this self-hatred and was maybe a little so she could torture his wife who still pops round to the café far too often {Turnabout is always fair play. Also, escalation is fair play really, only no one ever says that.}—but the humanity is thick. She shoves into the already full car and feels herself being moved like kelp in the sea with every turn and stop. It’s terrible traffic so that’s nearly every ten meters. 

Every passenger on and off shifts the bodies around her; by the time they’re in Kilburn she finds herself transported. She’s looking up, trying to distract herself and keep from feeling like a sardine by reading the adverts along the top. They’re all old and not quite funny, but of course there’s a hand blocking the advertisement with the sexiest people and it catches her eye. The palm is wide and the fingers narrow. It’s straining to reach the high bar as there aren’t any loops available. The sleeves have fallen down and the fine dark hairs can be seen curling over the edges to the pale fish belly of his wrist. She stares at it for a while, remembers it, thinks of him straining to not lean on anyone and reach so awkwardly for something so over his head—{Is he on his tiptoes, you think?}—the red and white bits of skin around his fingers where he can barely get round it, and smirks a bit. 

She catches his eye, looks to the loop in her own loose, dangling grip, then back to his tight fingers. When her gaze makes it to his face again he’s smiling, shaking his head, eyes closed against her. But then he looks up, smiles right into her eyes, and she feels that switch flip, the warmth of the lights heating up. Of course the moment breaks at the next stop when he almost topples into a young mother with her child on like a shirt. He’s befuddled and embarrassed and apologetic in the extreme. 

They try to find other things to look at—but even people watching the massive crowd in their traveling tin can turns into a conversation between them: a silent mocking of this one’s fashion and that one’s singing voice and who’s better in bed—but are pretty unsuccessful.

The last body between them offloads at Gladstone Park Gardens and there’s a possel of teens on at the front pushing everyone back and so they’re slotted together. She chivalrously gives up the loop to him—must protect the children after all—but before she can grab the bar the bus jerks again and she falls into him and his arm comes round her. In the time they are stuck on being so close the shaft of space she’d been in is gone and they both know it. She settles there instead, holding on to him while he holds on to her loop. 

That close it’s harder to make enough conversation without speaking so instead it becomes the intense magnetism that has gotten them both in such scrapes. Even if the bus emptied out around them she knows she wouldn’t move. The centimeters between them disappear with her head tucked between his raised arm and head, his hand beneath her coat, and her fist around his lapel. The soft weight of his head against her cheek, knowing his foot is between hers, send her heart racing and put her mind at ease. She rubs the tip of her nose against his ear and sighs. Maybe it the breeze of her breath that has him turning, his nose stroking a path up her neck like a fingertip. 

Too soon he takes the full weight of his head back leaving her cheek cool. Looking into her eyes he takes his hand from her back and runs a warm finger down her face, tucking in her fringe, following her jaw line, tracing the edge of her bottom lip while her heart is breaking in her chest. She’s lost there. He smiles as the bus rattles to a stop, still full around them though she’s stopped noticing and only breaks eye contact when he pushes through the doors and walks off down the street. 

With all the bloody people in the way she barely sees him as the bus bulls back into traffic. His jacket flaps—gray almost in the glaring sun of the day—and his hand presses to the thud of his heart beating behind his ribs. 

The rest of the ride she thinks about hating him. It still doesn’t work. So she thinks about hating his good-byes, the way he insists on some form of “I love you.” She doesn’t ever want to lose them but that she only seems to get them before he leaves her makes her dread them.

But to never have one again, to never seen him again…

{…I guess it ends in a whimper after all.}


End file.
